Survival of the Fittest; The Primal Night
Category:Stories Lynnis wandered into the Dwarvish District Guard's Guild Hall, her eyes set on the opposite wall, deep in thought. Walking at a slow pace, she finally came to a seat, which she absent-mindedly sat down in, her mind still hard at work. Breaking her train of thought for a second to take a sip of her cocoa, an "Oh!" escaped her lips. Eldin stood there, looking questioningly at Lynnis, hand half-raised in a cautious wave. Lynnis smiled, stood, and replied "Sorry, I was lost in thought. I think I know what to do about this... writing problem" Eldin raised an eyebrow, and gestured towards Lynnis, a sign for her to continue. Smiling, she questioned "Well, you said your Mana was aiding this Primal, correct?" A nod. "Well, all we need to do is drain your mana then!" A pause, then a reluctant nod. "Well, any ideas?" Eldin paused, and gestured for the encyclopedia, but Lynnis quickly added "Because I have one. A Mana shield." Eldin frowned at this. He'd been planning to say a Blood elf, but maybe this was smarter.... couldn't kill it when enough mana had been drained though... "Well, do you know how to make a Mana shield?" Eldin frowned, and shook his head, then paused. Concentrating on what a friend of his had told him, a small turquoise spark popped up, orbitting an out-stretched finger. Grinning enthusiastically, Lynnis continued "Yes, just like that, but over your whole body!" Eldin's brow seemed to be trying to swap places with his eyeballs as he concentrated fiercely. For a few seconds, nothing happened, then a small pinprick of the light-blue mana appeared in the centre of his chestguard, quickly swelling around him into a large circle, hugging closely to his armor, turning him a metallic turquoise. Lynnis grinned and encouraged him, as the Mana Shield grew and grew, then finally it the base of it enveloped his feet. Suddenly, the mana shield bounced outwards, knocking back the chair Lynnis had been sitting in, smacking to a stop a foot away from his body, Eldin just visible through the blue haze. "Ok, thats just right, Eldin" Lynnis remarked smilingly, and began to conjure a small fireball to test the shield with. Inside him, the cautious, primitive Primal sniffed the air as it felt the Mana racing away from it, fuelling a spell. Suddenly, it's simple, predatory mind realised what it's host was doing. Ferally, it snarled at this, and chased after the Mana funnelling into Eldin's spell. Immediately as the Fireball blossomed, the shield collapsed inwards, before bouncing off the armor back to it's previous position. It quickly began to repeat this, speeding up until a solid sphere of air around Eldin was a turquoise blur, Eldin himself invisible save as a blue silhouette when the shield careened back inwards. Lynnis frowned at this, and let her fireball dissolve into the air. This wasn't right. The turquoise blur slowly shrunk downwards as Eldin's silhouette collapsed on all fours to the floor. Lynnis cried out "Eldin!" As the silhouette began to writh and warp within the turquoise maelstrom of mana. Eldin's gauntlets rattled off his arms as claws unsheathed themselves from his fingertips. His beard shot back inwards and began to spread over the rest of his face and downwards, turning into a thick fur. Loud Clangs and fabricky tearing sounds were heard as Eldin's boots then Legguards came untangled from his distorting legs as they bent in ways as the humanoid body should not. His tabard then armor were expelled from the translucent Mana prison, crashing into desks and chairs as his face twisted, stretched, and snarled. Only the faintest hint that this was once Eldin remained in the ginger-brown fur of the beast - But was definitely no Dwarf. On four sturdy legs, with claws, paws and rug-like fur, the Eldin-beast opened it's mouth and roared. Or it tried to. But no sound came from it's throat. Eldin struggled within his own mind, as the killer instincts took over. His already honed muscles grew and thickened as fur washed down his body. A savage howl resounded throughout his mind, as loud and echoing as a bell warning of midnight, and it was all he could do not to howl with it, to loose himself completely within this tempest of rage. Lynnis, shocked by the transformation, jumped into action with the vigour and verve of a veteran. Quickly flipping her hands in a spell-cast gesture, flames of a orange hue sprung up around the beast, burning around or even in the desks and chairs without leaving a mark, and began to close in on the Bearish-Eldin. Meanwhile, the Eldin-beast stared and pawed confusedly at it's muzzle as no sound came out. Smoothly, the fur rippled away from it's throat, to reveal his deep throat scar, already re-knitting itself with speed. As the wound sealed, the beast opened it's mouth again and roared - Deafeningly. Immediately it's fur took on a turquoise sheen and the mana shield expanded slowly, growing as tall as the flames. As Lynnis crooked her fingers, the Flames shot yet higher, burning with an intense yellow hue. In response, the Eldin-beast emitted a harsh growl of laughter, and the Shield glowed and shot out, crashing into the dancing flames. A bright glow blinded Lynnis, and when it faded, there remained a tableau of Turquoise and Red as the Shield fought the flickering flames. The Eldin-beast's fur slowly regained it's turquoise sheen even as the shield fought the flames, as it began to pace slowly forwards towards the flames. A foot away from the flames, the shield there pulled back towards Eldin like water to a drain, and the shield quickly flowed down this link into the Beast as the flames flashed past it, clashing in the centre of the circle where the Eldin-beast had stood. As the Eldin-beast slowly paced towards Lynnis, ferally grinning, she turned to run - and found herself face-to-face with the wall. Turning, the mana-sheathed Beast was almost upon her. With a purple implosion, Lynnis disappeared. The beast's surprise lasted only a second, as the Blinked Lynnis reappeared behind it and blasted a volley of Arcane Missiles at it. The shards struck true on the turquoise shield - And sank straight through it into the back of the great Beast. Howling in pain, it whipped round to face Lynnis, now wary of the even-relatively little gnome. 'The shield is only Partial!' thought Lynnis with an unthinking joy, 'I can attack it's back!' Even as she thought this, her joy ebbed as the arcane Shards's colour flowed out of them into the Beast, and their shape became as water and flowed also into the Primal. Flames crackled around Eldin's eyes as he struggled with the Primal. Reason could not slow it, charm it would ignore and it beat him in Guile. Eldin's world grew black as even the sensation of the burning flames faded into the Primal Night. Lynnis, now panicking, ran to the centre of the room. Abandoning all caution in the sight of it's retreating prey, the Primal loped towards Lynnis - and stopped as she released a Frost nova. Collapsing on it's backside, the Beast smiled sinisterly as the nova shot towards it - then flared turquoise as it's Shield flew up again. The rebounded magic shot back to Lynnis, as she briefly set herself on fire to neutralise the magic. That sparked an idea in the Prodigy's mind, and she cast a Frost Ward - on the Beast. Puzzled, the beast remained sitting as the armor chinked into place over it. Taking advantage of the confusion, Lynnis shot a Pyroclastic blast at it, melting the armor - only for the melting mana to be absorbed by the turquoise shield behind it. Standing suddenly, it aimed the remaining frost magic back at Lynnis, only to be thwarted by another eruption of flames from the Gnome. Angered now, the beast ran full pace at the mere morsel just as Lynnis fired a Fireball at the enraged Primal. Colliding with the Fireball at full speed, the beast crashed straight into a wall, and landed on it's back, unmovingly. Lynnis, fired up and slightly jittery from the fight, shot a couple more Arcane missiles into it's stomach, before running out Mana. Her arms shot up and a blue mist began to swirl about her as she channeled Evocation. Almost immediately, the Primal flipped itself onto all four paws, the missiles fading into it's ginger-brown fur, and launched itself onto Lynnis. Only just managing to stop her spell, she was smacked to the floor by the overweight Beast, her entire arm caught under one massive paw. Quickly the beast twisted, imprisoning it's prey underneath it's bulk. With no other options available to Lynnis, she closed her eyes and cast an Arcane explosion. The beast shot directly upwards, smashing into the ceiling, and came crashing down - right on top of the already crushed Lynnis. The only reason she still lived was that the beast's tree-trunk legs could not splay outwards, and so held it's body weight. She coughed weakly as her mouth filled with a warm, metallic-tasting liquid - blood. She could not fight, nor run, nor hide... The Primal snarled. In it's moment of triumph, the gnome had injured it, smashing one of it's legs! A flurry of mana flowed through it's body, and the bone regrew, the broken shards of the old bone melting and being re-absorbed. All through this, Eldin watched, silently, from the blackness. He watched the Mana flow, the Mana being used up. And waited. The beast snarled, as Mana crackled off it, turning every strand of fur into a turquoise light show. It pulled it's head back for the strike... and paused. The mana. It wanted to strike down the Food, not it's Mana! Outraged at it's own body, the Primal tried to redirect the magic, all too late, as Eldin's mind re-emerged from the blackness... Lynnis could not close her eyes, could only stare in numbness as the beast's fur began to glow, brighter and brighter. It's face snarled, it's eyes crazy. It lifted it's head back again - And a bolt of blue Mana shot down through Lynnis. But yet it didn't hurt her, didn't even touch her. Instead, the beast was lifted off the floor, slammed once more into the ceiling, crashing into a wall and finally the floor several metres away from Lynnis. Yet that was not the end of the Mana's assault. As Lynnis lifted herself painfully off the floor, the Beast rose once more into the air - and the Mana shield flew out from his body again. Instead of blurring back and forth, the shield just seemed to thicken and thicken, until finally all you could see of the Eldin-Beast was a faintly darker shade of blur inside the cataclysmic storm of magic. Inside that whirling sphere of Mana, Eldin's body began to change again. Inhuman yelps and even unfamiliar screams bellowed out from the sphere as if it were a megaphone. The sounds battered Lynnis backwards as she fought her way to the boiling pool of mana surrounding her friend. "Mine! MINE!" howled the inhuman voice and Eldin struggled to even maintain consciousness. Another wave of mana, his own mana, struck the Dwarf, and he flung it away from him, unaware of whether the Howl was Primal pain or a feral pleasure in the fight. But the Primal only fought with his own mana, so he was determined to get rid of it" At almost the exact same moment as she stopped, several whips of turquoise magic lashed out of the sphere past Lynnis, most of which grabbed chairs or desks as the flailed about. Slowly, these objects started to be pulled inwards, as if these tentacles of mana were fishing lines drawing in their catch. Suddenly, they went taut, and the objects stopped - Then flung themselves through the many doors, the tentacles still attached. The sphere slowly began to warp and distort around the figure of the struggling, flailing Eldin-Beast as it's form became closer to that of the original Dwarf. The sphere thickened around these lashes of mana, while it thinned so drastically everywhere else it became almost as if a cocoon for a struggling insect. Finally, as Eldin's image became the dominant one in the Eldin-beast struggle, a cracking sound echoed around the stoney Guild hall, and one of the tentacles shot back inside, dragging a now three-legged chair, crashing straight into the cocoon. A figure that was undoubtedly all Dwarf shot out of the mana shield, attached only by that tentacle, heading for a wall at terminal velocity. As a struggling Lynnis crooked her fingers in a spell-casting gesture to protect Eldin, the trailing Mana shield curved round on itself, tugging at Eldin like a parachute until he dropped to the floor slowly, then covering him like a cloak. Slowly, the mana began to fade and flow inwards towards the still dwarf. Lynnis stumbled towards Eldin, the battered 6 year old genius gently bleeding from her nose. She made it only a few steps before Eldin slowly pushed himself up. Looking at Lynnis, Eldin did a double-take - His armor, and clothings, had been expelled from the Mana shield. Covering himself quickly, he looked up to see Lynnis staggering the last few feet to him. "Eldin... are you ok?" she asked, her world-weary voice sounding out of place from this tiny child. Silently, cursing the weaknesses within him that had lead him to savage her, he began to cry, huge sobs coming from his chest. Lynnis heard the sobs, though it took her oxygen-starved brain precious seconds to understand just what it meant. Gasping amazedly, all injury forgotten, she exclaimed "Eldin, your throat!" With snot dribbling from his nose, unable to wipe it away for fear of uncovering himself before this child, he mouthed a word. A faint 'wh' noise came from his throat. Stunned, he tried to stare at his own mouth, seemingly seeing through his bent nose and bushy beard. Another faint 'wh' noise came from him, and he frowned. All that for that most precious of gifts... and he could barely use it, he had been so long without it. Concentrating hard, he focused on the re-chained, battered Primal within him, and imagined crushing it with a mental hand. A yelp of protest and a primitive deal later, his throat bulged notably as unused muscles regrew to their former size. "What?" Eldin spoke. Lynnis grinned, almost swaying side to side with fatigue. "So thats what you sound like. I always wondered." Eldin, thinking on this, realised he sounded odd. His accent! "Tha's a though', yer ne'er heard me speakin' 'fore now, ha'e yer..." Lynnis immediately hugged Eldin, glad to have her friend back. But Eldin stared just at the floor, tears still in his eyes, and turned away. Lynnis broke off the hug, sensing his awkwardness, and, trying to bring things back to normal, said "Well, Eldin, do you want some Hot coco? I've got quite a bit." Eldin, feeling guilty and ashamed for what he had done to the child, muttered "Ah'll... jes' ha'e sum' o' me tea, than's." Reaching a hand to his chest to fetch the flask of tea he carried, he realised again he had no tabard - or clothes. Jumping, startled, he looked hastily about, and grabbed his Legguards from a nearby wall. Sliding into them, he suddenly cringed, reached into them, and fished out a piece of cloth - part of the woolen underclothes he'd worn under his armor. Muttering quietly "Damn trewsers", he retrieved his boots, then his armor and gloves, and soon was fully-decent again. Lynnis, drinking from her coco, her nosebleed now scabbed over, simply said "Well... I'm off now, Eldin... I've had a much more intense day than most 6 year-olds could cope with." Eldin, almost chuckling to this despite his somber mood, blurted out "Lynnis, Ah'm real' sorry. Really, Ah'm sorry." Lynnis frowned, and interjected "Eldin, if I didn't care, I would of ran. I cared. It's not your fault." And with that, despite Eldin's babbled apologies, she finished her coco and walked out. Eldin, left alone in the devastated Guild hall he called Home, with what he had regarded as the ultimate gift returned to him, stood and silently wept for almost a minute, before slowly beginning to pick up the overturned desks and chairs. 'Be careful what you wish for, for you may recieve it in full'.